■ Aviation
Lufthansa eyeing Iberia
Germany's flag-carrier Lufthansa has started discussions on a possible move to buy "all or part" of Spanish airline Iberia, a French newspaper reported yesterday. The economic daily La Tribune, without citing its sources, said Lufthansa had opened discussions -- but not negotiations -- on a possible move to buy a key stake in Iberia, which is currently 10 percent owned by British Airways. Such a move could create an airline that would carry 100 million passengers per year, compared to the 70 million carried annually by another European merged giant, Air France-KLM.
■ Retail
Wal-Mart, Bharti enter talks
A top Wal-Mart Stores Inc executive arrived in India yesterday for talks with India's Bharti Retail Pvt Ltd on hammering out details of deal between the two companies to set up a chain of supermarkets and big-box stores across India, the American company said. Wal-Mart vice chairman Mike Duke arrived yesterday in Mumbai, said Sachin Talwar, a spokesman for the company in India. Duke will travel to New Delhi today for talks with Bharti executives. Bharti plans to invest up to US$2.5 billion in the next eight years to set up the chain, but Wal-Mart has not said how much it will spend.
■ Business
San Miguel sells stake
San Miguel Corp, the Philippines' largest food and beverage conglomerate, signed an agreement with the Coca-Cola Co yesterday to sell its 65 percent stake in their joint-venture bottling company, the two companies said. The signing of the US$590 million deal involving Coca-Cola Bottlers Philip-pines Inc (CCBPI) caps negotiations between the two parties that started early last year. San Miguel was previously the majority shareholder of CCBPI and had management control of the bottler. San Miguel said it will develop its own domestic beverage business, producing juice drinks and ready-to-drink teas, to complement existing operations in Thailand and Indonesia.
■ Stock Markets
Bourses form alliance
The Tokyo and London stock exchanges are set to sign a business alliance today, informed sources said yesterday. Tokyo Stock Exchange president Taizo Nishimuro has left for London, where he is expected to sign the agreement with London Stock Exchange chairman Chris Gibson-Smith, the sources said. The alliance will facilitate reciprocal listings of exchange-traded funds as well as information-sharing on trading systems, the sources said, confirming an earlier report in the Nikkei Shimbun. Last month, the Tokyo exchange struck a similar alliance deal with the New York Stock Exchange and is also holding talks with the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the largest US futures market.
■ Automobiles
Isuzu, NTT to announce deals
Isuzu Motors Ltd and NTT Communications Corp are expected to announce business deals with Russian firms when Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov visits Japan next week, a newspaper said yesterday. Isuzu is to sign a memo-randum of understanding with major Russian automaker OAO Ulyanovsky Avtomobilny Zavod to set up a joint venture in Russia for production of small trucks, the Nikkei Shimbun said. NTT and Russian tele-communications firm TransTeleCom are in the final stages of negotiations for a project to link the two countries by jointly laying fiber-optic cable.
■ Oil
Companies fixed prices
South Korea's antitrust watchdog said yesterday it would fine four local oil companies a total of 52.6 billion won (US$55.9 million) for fixing prices. The Fair Trade Commission said SK, Hyundai Oilbank, GS Caltex and S-Oil colluded to raise prices for petrol, diesel and kerosene from April 1 to June 10 in 2004. It said it had referred its findings to prosecutors for a possible criminal investigation. The price-rigging is estimated to have cost consumers 240 billion won.
■ Finance
Citigroup HK head retires
Citigroup Inc, the world's biggest financial services company, said Hong Kong chief country officer Chan Tze-ching (陳子政) would retire at the end of April, according to an internal memo sent by the New York-based bank. Chan, who joined Citigroup more than two decades ago, also heads corporate and investment banking in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. He has chosen to devote more time to his family and pursue other interests, said Robert Morse, chief executive officer of corporate and investment banking in Asia. Citigroup will announce Chan's successor during the transition period.
■ Finance
Malaysian bank sells stake
Bumiputra-Commerce Holdings Bhd (BCHB), Malaysia's No. 3 lender by market value, said yesterday it had agreed to sell a significant stake to the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd, raising US$383 million to reduce debt. The sale will only slightly dilute the stakes held in BCHB by Khazanah Nasional, Malaysia's state investment company, and the Employee's Provident Fund, the state pension fund. BCHB said in a statement it would sell 117 million new shares at US$3.26 per share to the Japanese bank, which would also get a seat on BCHB's board. The Japanese bank's stake in BCHB will rise to 4.5 percent from 1.1 percent.
■ Opto-electronics
TAITRA holds forum
The Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) will collaborate with Taiwanese opto-electronics businesses to hold a forum on the opto-electronics industry in Osaka, Japan, from April 16 to April 19, a TAITRA official said yesterday. TAITRA, in conjunction with nine firms, is planning to head for Japan to organize the 2007 Taiwan Opto-electronics Day forum, the official said. Japan is the world's largest supplier of opto-electronics, producing 41.9 percent of global output, the official said. The market was expected to increase annually by 12.3 percent between 2005 and 2025.
■ Patents
R&D `needs boost'
Taiwan should promote capitalization and securitization of intellectual property rights to boost the the biotechnology industry, a researcher with the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) said on Wednesday. Lee Lien-tze (李連滋), a research fellow at ITRI's Biomedical Engineering Research Laboratory, said the R&D-oriented industry requires heavy capital investment over a long period. Citing the pharmaceutical industry, Lee said that developing and marketing a new drug could take 10 years and cost US$1 billion. The annual turnover of the global market is around US$800 billion. Sales of new products account for about US$150 billion, Lee said.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts